He's right. Those were more during the Tales of the Jedi era. But still, I would have liked to see them in the game. I think I talked about that once during a MER podcast. It's not inconceivable that some of these ancient sabers would have survived to TOR times.

If my memory serves correctly, the Jedi have the Sith to thank for self contained power cells used in lightsabers. Which I think was Ulic Qel-Droma that pioneered it, and used it quite effectively against the Order for a number of years. He based it on "frozen blaster" technology, using a electromagnetic field to contain the plasma. But even those early ones ran out fast, being they were just blaster packs.

Looking at the Tales of the Jedi comics, I think the protosabers might have died out by the time of Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma. They're all sporting regular, but ancient-looking (stone, almost organic seeming) lightsabers by the end of that series.

edit: so there's about a thousand-or-so gap between the Great Hyperspace War, from whence those characters came (also, see: Lost Tribe of the Sith #1) and the Great Sith War (mentioned above).

If you've started a Jedi Consular, you recover the remains of what is supposed to be the first ever lightsaber; which I assume would be one of these. But then you use the parts to creat a current age lightsaber.